Mass Effect: The Dead Sea
by IAMTHEJOKER88
Summary: Whistler is a sufferer. Alone on a tiny planet, gazing through a tiny window. He is damned to look out on the Dead Sea for nine months, that is, until the Reapers get him. A story of hardship, Whistler must face a new threat of the Reapers. Prelude to ME1


Mass Effect: The Dead Sea

I: The Blip

Beyond the wall, lies she, the sea. Like none I have ever I known. When I sit in the recluse of two dying suns, I ponder, gazing through a small-etched window. Beyond a pane of reinforced glass, she lies. Dead and still. The winds troubled her, but she did not stir. I have looked out on her corpse for nine months now. Though on this snowed rock, the months are longer by nine days. I suppose I have nearly wasted a year of my life here. I think of the Caribbean when I ponder. I think of how she danced, her waves lapping up against the shore in a waltz or crashing with full bravado into ships. I thought of it as ballet. She was not a dancer though. The Caribbean was a fearsome mother, a tyrant that had swallowed many whole, my father included. I think in my days of reminiscing, I have resorted to merely dreaming. Yet I spend so much time there and not here that it saddens me to think that the home I had spent so much of my time in is a simple distortion. A madman's fantasy. Yet, I look out on the dead sea through this tiny window, and think this an even madder reality.

'Whistler, I've got something.' It echoed in my mind. I pondered still. She stirred.  
'Whistler!' I rose, but not entirely, for the cabin is a only six feet high, and I am a tall being. I bustled through the cabin, knocking papers to the floor, where they now piled, and reached a ladder. Cold hands gripped the cold metal. With an effort, I reached the top, through a hatchway. I appeared in the observation post. The pinnacle of this cabin. My nine months' work. Sat at a desk was my friend and colleague. Although he sat, he was hunched over, and his legs bent extraordinarily at the knees, for, sadly, this room was small too.  
'What?' I said.  
'Blip.'  
'What?'  
'A blip. Look.'  
I looked over his shoulder. A circular screen, like old fashioned radar, filled the centre of the desk.  
'What do you think, mate?' He bore a thick English accent.  
'I don't see any-'

A blip. More of a beep, but a blip nonetheless, presented itself. A theatrical arrival, _mon amie. _I doubted you, yet you stir. I pushed my friend aside and placed my hands around the screen, and gripped it tightly. Beep. I exhale, and loosen my grip.  
'What... Ha!'  
'There's something out there.' I turned to him, and our looks of sincerity dissolved. A rare smile broke out on our faces. We rushed to the ladder and scrambled down, wrestling gleefully for the first place at the bottom of the stairs. For the first time since we had arrived, we willingly and joyfully tugged our environment suits on. Big, yellow things. They caught the eye, especially in this snow.

For the first time in six months, I stepped outside. The shivers returned to me, but I laughed them off. Jogging, that was what I was doing. In snow boots. A first on plant Dead. I stumbled and fell, many times, but I got right back up. We headed east of the cabin for two miles, in search of the blip.  
'Whistler, it's up ahead.'  
'This could be anything. Ready yourself.' He did so, pulling out a small pistol.  
We edged forward in an eager anticipation. Nothing had so remedied our stupor than that of uncertainty, for what was certain, was that for nine months we had looked out on this infertile sea, to find nothing but clumps of white bound together by the deadness of it all. My friend kept waving the gun in vertical strokes. The environment suit and snow shoes made manoeuvrability stiff and unnatural, so it was of no surprise. The blip that had really been a beep suddenly became a low humming noise.  
'Something's wrong.'

The humming was winding down. A light, blue, shone. Radiated like a beacon. From out of the snow, rose something white. Whiter than Planet Dead, and it was shiny. It stood like a man, like my friend and I. With a single blue eye that occupied most of its face, it stared, or glared, at us. This was no eye though. It was a machine of sorts, something that I have never seen. Behind it, lay a trail of disturbed snow. It had a hasty arrival of sorts. The trail ended around it, and cratered around its feet. At least I think you would call them feet, whatever he stood on anyhow. I think it was dazed, and so were we, for it just stood there. Then it looked to my friend's hand, the pistol wherein. The blue-lit eye snapped to red.  
'Bobby! Bobby, get back!' It was too late. In one moment, the thing leaped at my friend, and my friend was no more. The red-eyed frenzy had mauled him with one swipe of his mechanic arm, the pistol flew out of his hand and landed at my feet. I picked it up, and the thing looked at me, and I looked at it. I raised the pistol and pulled the trigger. Nothing. I hit the butt of the gun, checked the safety switch, like they had shown me in school, but still nothing. I threw the pistol at the thing's face and there came the sound of a crack.

The red-eyed monster was no longer red-eyed. In fact, he no longer had an eye, if you could call it that. The thing writhed and fell to the ground, its shiny white armour glistening blood, bathed in my friend. I kicked it with my boot, the boot's spikes dug in and ripped off some plating. I kicked in again and again. Until it lay still. I sat down in the snow, my friend, Bobby was no longer Bobby. A putrid organic that had frozen cold in the snow. His environment suit did well to bag his organs, but blood seeped out around him. I lay down in my bed, sinking beneath the many layers of snow and I cried. I was alone. I was still. All was still on Planet Dead, where the dead numbered one more.

I had a feeling I had died months ago, though. I'm not being pretentious. Insanity kills not the being, but the mind. So it amounted to three corpses. Bobby, Me, and she, the sea.


End file.
